Lifelog

I asked ChatGPT to convince me to start a daily writing habit in the voice of Shakespeare.

What do you think? Legit? 😆

Seeing all the indie hacker add GPT-3 to their apps is giving me major FOMO. [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com) had been the hot trending topic on the internet the past weeks. And you can actually train a version of the AI to suit your apps. The docs make it sound pretty [easy to do](https://openai.com/blog/customized-gpt-3/). So that got me thinking:

How would I use it? What AI-powered features would I add?

Just to brainstorm, here's my own list:

- An app to generate prompts for writing, based on your past writings. Paste a link to your Medium, Substack or Lifelog profile, and it spits back writing prompts and ideas based on the words and analytics of each post.
- A social good app to help laypeople find all public assistance initiatives and programmes by asking a question in plain English. AI gets trained on just the government websites, and the app only shows results from those sites.
- A conversational AI chatbot that gets trained on your SaaS's documentation and blog content, and only replies based on those content.
- A mental health bot app that chats with you based on your past journal writings.
- A speech writing app that helps you write speeches for people in the style and tone of voice based on their past speeches, e.g. write speech in voice of Donald Trump 😂

If you could create an AI-powered app, what app would you create?

I asked ChatGPT to convince me to start a daily writing habit in the voice of Donald Trump.

What do you think? Legit? 😆

So much of sleep quality has got to do with calming down before actually sleeping.

Yes there's stuff you should note *during* sleep—like thermal comfort—to ensure you sleep well. But I'm realising that the main barrier to good sleep quality in our modern lives seems to be about what we do *before* sleep, how we settle down the mind and body.

Our always on culture keeps us alert right to the minute before we drop off to sleep. All that blue light from our phone screen, TV and home lights in the evening and at night doesn't help. We mindlessly watch content that keeps us up till late, keeping our brains in wakefulness mode. Some even work out 2-3h before bed because that's the only time we have after work.

We had basically forgotten what good sleep hygiene is:

- Wind down routines 1-2h before bed to settle down
- Drink beverages like camomile tea to help you relax
- Do things that don't require electricity, e.g. read, talk, journal
- Meditate or stretch before bed to slow down
- No screens in evening
- Switch to warm lights in the house
- Dim down the lights in evening
- No exercise within 2-3h of bedtime
- Do relaxation breathing exercise upon lying down to relax more
- Chat with your family or partner to release any emotional energy you're keeping in
- Do quick journaling to download thoughts that's still on your mind, that you promise yourself to come back tomorrow
- Left field stuff: Use the Leela Inner Peace or Calm & Rest quantum energy cards

*What else can we do to calm down before sleep?*

Copying 90% of an existing business with 10% unique spin is so underrated.

Same reason why there's 10 different brands of orange juice in the supermarket all containing the same fruit inside.

There's always more room in the market than we assume, and people like more choices.

Yet for some reason many don't do it out of personal ego or pride. Or worse: They go the other extreme and clone entire websites/apps.

That got me thinking:

I should put my money where my mouth is and do it.

But thinking through, I did try it before:

- One 90:10 product is Sheet2Bio. It's 90% similar to all the incumbents like Linktree and Bio.Link, but the 10% differentiation is just in the Google Sheets as CMS. But it didn't do quite so well, or at least I haven't yet found the right value proposition for it and distribution channel.
- Lifelog is totally a 90:10 product too. It's building off what 200wordsaday was, with an added spin around writing about goals.
- Keto List Singapore is a 90:10 spin from NomadList, where the 10% is the targeting for keto folks in Singapore. It performed average in the initial few years.
- Sweet Jam Sites is so obviously a 90:10 spin from the conventional web design agency, but targeted for JAMstack sites. It never quite took off.
- Outsprint Design is 90% a consultancy service at it's base, with just 10% differentiation on business model, pricing, offering, and was my very first business that did well.

Indeed now that I ran through my key products, most of them are copied! 90% copied. Some hits, most misses. But that's the nature of the game. Copying guarantees nothing, just speed to market and validated market.

Goes to show, it's so easy to start products by 90% copying. But being truly unique and standout is a lot harder than you think.

Though not that being unique it matters all that much...

A gem from one of my favourite email newsletters of all time – the 3-2-1 newsletter from [James Clear](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/december-8-2022):

> “Look for situations where the energy is already flowing downhill. Invest in relationships where there is already mutual respect. Create products that tap into a desire people already have. Work on projects that play to your strengths. And then, once the potential of the situation is already working for you, add fuel to the fire. Pour yourself into the craft. Act as if you have to outwork everyone else—even though the wind is at your back. The idea is to sprint downhill, not grind uphill.”

“Sprint downhill, not grind uphill” is such a great and better way to describe this definition of [product-market fit](https://golifelog.com/posts/being-pulled-forward-with-product-market-fit-1669257663638) that I like to use – being pulled forward by a product.

Because that's how it feels like physically. With Lifelog and Sheet2Bio, I feel like I'm grinding uphill. With Carrd plugins, I feel like I'm sprint downhill. There's a significant and remarkable difference to how either *feels*.

In fact, let's run down the list of attributes that Mr Clear provided and compare that to how it feels for Carrd plugins:

- “Invest in relationships where there is already mutual respect.” – I help people with their Carrd issues, and they are thankful or reciprocate. And so far, customers are reasonable and respectful of what they seek support for.
- “Create products that tap into a desire people already have.” – Carrd has some feature gaps which plugins plug well. Beyond gaps, I made plugins that's considered nice-to-have but people desire, e.g. the confetti plugin.
- “Work on projects that play to your strengths.” – It plays to my strengths because I know how to code, but not that good a coder to be a professional enterprise one. Helping folks with code snippets with limited scope and minimal functionality works to my favour. I also love using Carrd, and that adds to my strengths too.
- “...Add fuel to the fire. Pour yourself into the craft.” – I find myself willingly pulled forward by the work. Someone asks a question in a community forum, and I dive straight into it. Even though I have other work to do. There's something about helping others solve a painful problem that I'm fueled by.
- “Act as if you have to outwork everyone else—even though the wind is at your back.” – I'm not sure I'm outworking everyone in the Carrd ecosystem but I certainly not wanting to take this "wind on my back" for granted. I still want to work on it and improve things. But even while this project is pulling me forward, I'm not making it as my main project but keeping it in side project status. That way I stay on my toes while not putting too much expectations on it.

What a great analogy. So much to fit in there.

Product-market fit is sprinting downhill, not grinding uphill.

I’ve always believed I needed a deliberate practice in anything I want to learn or get good at. Don’t just practice for 10,000 hours blindly, but be intentional about what you’re learning and be deliberate about how to improve and iterate.

While I’ve since moved away from deliberate practice as a sufficient formula for any sort of success as an entrepreneur, that’s not to say I don’t need any deliberate practice at all. It’s necessary, just not sufficient.

As an entrepreneur, how do you practice to get better at this entrepreneurship thing? What do you practice?

Cue the hidden benefit of doing a portfolio of small bets. Of chasing having so called shiny objects syndrome.

The more small bets you take, the more practice you get. The more products, services you launch and run, the more boots-on-the-ground experience you get on entrepreneurship. The more pivots you do for each product and business, the better you get at entrepreneurship

That’s why 2nd or 3rd time founders are looked upon differently from 1st time founders.

You’re an entrepreneur. You’re in the business of starting and running businesses. That’s your practice.

And practice makes perfect.

I wrote about getting some Black Friday deals for [quantum tech for sleep](https://golifelog.com/posts/quantum-tech-for-sleep-1669592548893) to help with my poor sleep quality.

And it arrived today!

The [Leela quantum energy frequency cards](https://leelaq.com/product/leela-quantum-frequency-cards/) are credit card sized metal cards that are charged with powerful, positive frequencies by world-renowned healers. I got the the calm and rest card to help with my sleep. What they said about it:

> The Calm & Rest frequency was designed and intended to support a much more relaxed and deeper calm and rest. Leela Quantum Tech is neither in the medical field, nor intends to be, so we also refrain from making any health claims. We can only pass on what others say about it. All test persons so far have reported that within about 1-5 minutes clearly noticeable relaxation occurred, that some described as if the Sandman came and did his magic. Several people tested it while still being in a conversation. After 5 minutes they had to put the card away so as to not want to go to bed right away. Then they picked up the card again when they were generally ready to go to bed and had very good night of sleep, deeper than normal. No morning issues were reported at all since the frequency disappears fairly quickly when you put the card away.

So right before bed I took it out, held it and then placed it under my pillow. I suspect reading those online reviews might have gave me expectations because I kept waiting for that sleepy feeling to wash over me, like some sleeping pill. But that didn't happen at all.

I just kind of went into sleep normally, at my usual sleep time (9:15pm) - not early like at 8:30pm. Had to get up once to go to the bathroom at 2:30am. Woke up at 4:45am as per my usual alarm. Here's my sleep chart:


- Sleep score: 82%
- In bed: 7h29m
- Asleep: 7h20m
- Asleep after 8min
- Heart rate: 78bpm
- Wake up mood: OK

Interestingly, I didn't feel too tired or sleepy 1h after waking. The sleep chart seems to be pretty good too - the peaks are regularly spaced and low (means normal undisrupted sleep cycles), with the only awake peak when I went to the bathroom. I was in bed for 7h29m and actually asleep for 7h20m, so overall that's means the sleep quality was quite good. In the past, 7+h of sleep usually trends with 70+% sleep score, so I think the 82% score was quite accurate. For contrast, just yesterday I was in bed for a similar period of time at 7h10m, but only asleep for 6h40m, and only got 74% score.

So I slept better last night with the sleep card. But was it a coincidence? How would I know?

This was just the first night. More observations to come!

I was inspired by what [@searchbound](https://twitter.com/searchbound/status/1598384995919446017) buying up descriptive domains of emojis with high search volume, and I went and did the same for emojis related to my products.

> Some context: Peter's a domainer, and his mode of operation is buying descriptive domains and building useful websites on them, usually job boards, e.g. VidaliaOnions.com, RanchWork.com, SEOjobs.com, BirthdayParties.com

I bought writingemoji.com (2.1k monthly search vol) and writinghandemoji.com (300 monthly search vol) for Lifelog. And plugemoji.com (1.0k mthly search vol) for Plugins For Carrd.

The hope is that I can somehow use them to generate organic search traffic for their respective products. To be honest, I don't know if it'll work! The search volume isn't super high unlike for heart emoji – 160k searches. But it sure sounds fun, and might be a good way to play around with tools and lead gens aka "side project marketing".

Other ideas:

- Promote my other products/side projects
- Affiliate links, e.g. to a Carrd subscription or to my Carrd templates
- Show ads from Google (but unlikely)
- Show ads of other indie hackers
- Collect emails for my products

Fun experiment! Let's see how this unfolds!

“F**k it I’m doing it” is the approach I want to do more of from now on. I want to catch myself saying this more often in the week, month, year.

Because every time a “f**k it” happens, that means I’m taking a chance, risking something. It means I’m taking the leap of faith out of my comfort zone to try something I’m not 100% competent in or certain about. It means I’m not over-thinking it, no paralysis by analysis.

It can feel disconcerting at first, because I’m more used to being intentional and purposeful. “F**k it” doesn’t at all feel intentional. It feels more like a puppy chasing after a car – it wouldn’t know what to do even if it caught up to the car and got a firm bite on it. “F**k it” means fortuitous.

But that’s what embracing opportunity feels like. That’s what following my nose and acting on intuition to a chaotic environment feels like. That’s what Bayesian thinking feels like.

Maybe it’ll end with nothing. There’s definitely a high chance of nothing fruitful emerging from chasing random cars on the street. But as with probabilistic approaches, more is more. And the more I go “F**k it”, the higher the probability of getting more wins.

So more “f**k it”, less “sit on it”.

I passed 700 days here on Lifelog recently. That’s almost 2 years of unbroken daily writing. Some thoughts:

Simple is best
I got a simple system for my content flywheel going. Telegram saved messages for collecting notes, ideas and links. Daily writing here on Lifelog to process those ideas and thoughts. I like that simplicity. Big note-taking systems using Notion and Roam never quite worked for me, even though it’s so popular. I’m glad I found a simpler way that worked for me that’s sustainable. That last line is key to longevity I feel.

The payoff is the process
The payoff is the process. I can take all day to talk about all the benefits of writing. Clarity. Content library. Connections. But those are after the fact benefits. The direct payoff is just the process of writing something down every day. Something. Anything. It feels nice. I reconnect with myself. That’s it.

Every day is still hard
Yet despite having systems, it never gets easier. Some days I still struggle to know what to write. Today was an example. Every now and then I get reminded of just how much of an infinite game this is. We’re never done done.

Doubtlessness
Despite how hard it can get, I seldom ever question why I do this. There was probably a period of time early on in my daily writing journey where I had doubts. Am I chasing a streak? I would ask. What’s the point of writing some random sh*t every day? Who would read? Why do I bother? All those questions, GONE. After 700 days streak—and more if you count the 2 year streak before I started on this streak—all those doubts are gone. I know I want to do this. And it’s not just because I’m committed. But because it’s gotten to be such a core part of me, like eating and breathing, that I no longer doubt it. Now that’s something. When was the last time you built a habit outside of normal survival habits like eating, drinking that you reached this level of doubtlessness? I can’t recall other habits I have that I’ve done with such unwavering consistency. Not even meditation. Not even mindfulness. Not even my hobbies.

There. 700 days. Well done, me.

Lately I'm been sleeping poorly. Again.

Every time when my sleep gets bad, 9 out of 10 times I know it's because I veered off my sleep fundamentals. It's not even about using the latest sleep biohacking tech or supplements. When the core basics are off, no tech can help.

And thinking through, I am indeed breaking many sleep fundamentals:

- Late dinner. Eating within 1-2h of sleeping affects sleep quality. And I eat late because i work late.
- Late cut-off for work. Usually I have an alarm reminder to get me off my compueter by 4pm. But usually I linger a bit till 5pm. Lately, I'm working till past 8pm. Baaad idea. The extra screen time and blue light, the ensuing late dinner, all clocks up to poor sleep later.
- Screentime at night, and before sleep. Usually once I stop work, I don't check my phone. But lately I'm doomscrolling after that, and even right before bed. The blue light isn't helping with getting me in the my
- Slacking off on morning walk and exercise. Exercise always helps with sleep. Sometimes I'm not physically tired enough at the end of the day, and it makes it harder to fall asleep.
- Stress. Recent consultancy gigs had been somewhat stressful, and that impacted sleep. On top of that, I'm working later into the day and through weekends. Not enough time to decompress.
- Too much caffeine. I recently switched to drinking local coffee, which is a stronger brew. And sometimes drinking it past 2-3pm.

This seems to be a lesson I circle back pretty often. You're never *done* done, even though you've learned it once. There's always new seasons, new challenges, new lessons, or old lessons relearned in new ways.

Sleep is such a infinite game.

Ready, shoot, aim.

That's how I'm going to do it from now on for my portfolio of small bets approach. Credits go to [@jasenf](https://twitter.com/jasenf/status/1598143751066914816) for the phrase!

In case you missed it:

Not "ready, aim, shoot", but "ready, shoot, aim."

Why shoot first, aim later?

This reminded me of the [Cynefin framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework):


Because for most new products, we're operating in the **chaotic** zone. Cause and effect are unclear and confusing. Responding based on prior knowledge has no guarantees. There's no way to truly validate a business or product idea until you actually launch it. [Validation is a mirage](https://world.hey.com/jason/validation-is-a-mirage-273c0969), as Jason Fried nicely put it:

> If you want to see if something works, make it. The whole thing. The simplest version of the whole thing – that’s what version 1.0 is supposed to be. But make that, put it out there, and learn. If you want answers, you have to ask the question, and the question is: Market, what do you think of this completed version 1.0 of our product?
>
> Don’t mistake an impression of a piece of your product as a proxy for the whole truth. When you give someone a slice of something that isn’t homogenous, you’re asking them to guess. You can’t base certainty on that.

That's why we use small bets in such chaotic situations. Because we want to act-sense-respond. Act first and fast by scoping something small, and make little steps to get to small wins. And from acting, we get data where we can make sense of the situation, and then respond to try to put more order in place and transform the situation from chaos to complex.

The problem is most people try to sense-categorize/analyze-respond. They assume launching a new business to be "known knowns" and "knowns unknowns", in the simple or complicated zone, where best practices are known to work, and cause and effect are straightforward. And when things go awry, they externalise and blame luck, the market, or their competitors. Most failures come from oversimplifying the problem into a domain that it is not.

So don't do ready, aim, shoot; sense, analyze, respond.

Ready, shoot, aim. Act, sense, respond.

No lessons. No threads. The payoff is the process.

Setting intentions for December had always been easy. Every tail end of the year, it’s the same intentions.

Rest and reflect.

By right I should be in Bali now, having my annual solo retreat. Living in an eco-lux villa. Waking up to the sound of birds. Swimming in the sea. Taking long calm walks in rice fields. Scooting around looking for adventures on my scooter. Eating delicious local foods grown in the fertile volcanic soil. Sampling single origin drip coffee in one of their many specialty cafes. Writing under the full moon. Or just doing nothing at all.

While I look forward to reliving that past life some time in the future, I make do at home base for now.

A badly needed break, to rest and reflect.

Rest. Taking care of my health and body.
Rest. Spending much needed family time.
Rest. Loosening the mind from deadlines and goals.

Reflect. On the year that had passed.
Reflect. On the new year ahead.
Reflect. On my indie solopreneur journey. And life.

So there’s actually lots to do. But rest in action. Active rest is my poison of choice.

Active, yet centered.
Calmness in motion.
Power while at rest.

Onwards!

📈 Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $109 (↓$10)
📊 One-off revenue: $918 (↑$657)
💰 Total revenue: $1027 (↑$657) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
🏦 Total profit: $965 (↑$641) (excl. salary and consulting costs)

👀 Tweet impressions: 260k vs 232k
💙 Likes: 3.1k vs 2.6k
💬 Engagement rate: 4.0% vs 3.9%
🏡 Profile visits: 40.5k vs 32.7k
📣 Mentions: 1517 vs 1088
👣 New followers: 402 vs 280
📧 Email subscribers: 51 (↑11)

My intentions for November were simple:

• Finish well for my consulting gigs.
• Start from zero for my products, without any preconceived or blindly inherited notions of right or wrong, should or must.

I definitely finished well for the consulting gigs. Client feedback were mostly good, though I expected better Net Promoter Scores. Overall, finishing without major mishaps. And I got paid! Phew that was a close shave... my savings were running out.

Alignment to that sense of being able to do it my own way, without any borrowed narratives felt good. I under no illusion that I’m completely free from external influence, of course. It takes time to be an independent thinking, self-assured (or shameless) creator. But the initial steps this month felt optimistically promising.

Going all in on hyper-commercialism and marketing overdrive for Black Friday was fun this month. And for the first time, my total revenue from my indie products (excl. consulting) hit the $1k milestone! That counts for something! 🤑

Overall, November felt like I’m taking my first steps of a different, more self-assured approach in my indie solopreneur journey. Definitely bodes well for the new year to come!

Onwards to December!

Hey guys, Heroku keeps warning me about heroku-18 stack update for my Strapi app...

Anyone know how does updating heroku-18 stack impact Strapi?

More context:

—-
System Information:
Strapi Version: 3.2.4
Operating System: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
Database: SQLite 5.0.0, PostgreSQL 8.4.1
Node Version: 12.18.4
NPM Version: >=6.0.0
Yarn Version: 1.22.4
—-

I have a Strapi instance running on Heroku with Postgres database.

With Heroku forcing our hand to update apps on heroku-18 stack, I’m wondering what impact updating the heroku-18 stack will have on my Strapi instance.

Just asking for the overall approach:

- Approach with extreme caution and follow the steps as recommended
- Nah updating that will not impact Strapi at all. Just update.

Which option should I take? So anyone did a heroku update recently?

Totally by accident.

A happy accident.

In 2019 I decided to learn to code for the nth time. Vue.js was my poison of choice. And after multiple failed attempts at learning coding from online classes, I decided to learn by doing instead by making micro standalone apps that can be done within a week. The beauty of Vue is - I can make standalone apps and embed them anywhere.

After making I shared these little learning projects I would embed them in Carrd as a way to share my learnings. It’s also a nice digital artefact to keep as a memory and accomplishment of each step along my coding journey.

Then I had a brain fart… These apps could plug features that Carrd doesn’t have! Carrd did some things really well (being easy to set up single page landing site), but the intentional constraints meant it didn’t do some other things so good.

So I released the initial few plugins for free. The accordion dropdown menu plugin got popular.

Released more plugins like pricing tables plugin. The initial few months was wild, I was manually cloning these Carrd sites and transferring it to people. It was painful and time-consuming. Thankfully, soon came the Seller programme, and people could download the site as a template directly.

When it became clear people wanted this, I decided to start with a paid plugin, a feature most asked for in my conversations with them – a nav menu bar that’s mobile responsive.

Then rinse and repeat free + paid.

And like they love to say, the rest is history. 😆

What started as a by-product (of learning coding) ended up as a main product. Truly a “sell your sawdust” business. More and more I’m thinking that successful products often start as happy accidents.

No better way to start in my opinion! 🤸‍♀️

I've been having a period of poor sleep quality lately. Even when I go to bed at 8:30pm to get 8h in bed, my sleep score's lower than usual. I would get 60%-70%, when it's usually 90% for 8h of sleep. That shows the sleep quality was poor. And indeed, I don't feel rested after I wake. Likely culprits might be stress, or a less than ideal diet, or caffeine. But it's been frustrating to not be able to pin it down to factors causing it. And I'm feeling like I'm out of options.

That's why when I saw the the 25% Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale for Leela quantum products, I thought it might be timely to introduce something new and different to my sleep biohacking. If trying the same things aren't bringing different results, it'll be insane to keep doing the same things. So I went and bought some [Leela quantum energy frequency cards](https://leelaq.com/product/leela-quantum-frequency-cards/) – the calm and rest card, and the abundance card, at US$145 each (before discount).

The cards are credit card sized metal cards with the thickness of 2-3 credit cards stacked together. It fits easily inside a pocket or wallet and are charged with powerful, positive frequencies by world-renowned healers. Here's what they said about the calm and rest card:

> The Calm & Rest frequency was designed and intended to support a much more relaxed and deeper calm and rest. Leela Quantum Tech is neither in the medical field, nor intends to be, so we also refrain from making any health claims. We can only pass on what others say about it. All test persons so far have reported that within about 1-5 minutes clearly noticeable relaxation occurred, that some described as if the Sandman came and did his magic. Several people tested it while still being in a conversation. After 5 minutes they had to put the card away so as to not want to go to bed right away. Then they picked up the card again when they were generally ready to go to bed and had very good night of sleep, deeper than normal. No morning issues were reported at all since the frequency disappears fairly quickly when you put the card away.

I think combining the abundance card with sleep card will help. Abundance to help me with stress of survival and money in the daytime, and sleep card to help me relax and rest well.

Truth is, it always feels weird to talk about quantum tech, because it's so left field. Skeptics will think this is hocus pocus, a scam. But I do have some products from them, and I've felt some difference from touching and using it. Checking with more intuitive/sensitive energy workers who are based locally have also checked out. The way I see it – if it helps, even if from a placebo effect, then it helped. Worst case scenario is I wasted a few hundred dollars. No skin off my back.

Can't wait to try it! Will report back on how it fares.

I’ve not had a lazy Sunday in a long time.

Just time to do nothing. Watch Youtube videos all day. Sit around. Lie on the bed. Eating. Drinking. And the most productive thing I did was just writing this post.

Much needed, really.

It’s not about not working and just being lazy, but about feeling permissionless rest.

Truth is, I’ve not felt like I have permission to rest for the past 3 years now. There’s always a crisis to manage, big or small. Survival matters. Money. COVID. Business. Baby. Everything combined feels amplified to a point where it’s life and death.

Once or twice, it’s manageable.

But chronically over years is when problems emerge. Chronic health problems. From stress, anxiety, anger. Chronic comes when it’s hard to let go.

And stubborn that I am, I’m not so good at letting go, even though I’d like to think I am, with all the Buddhist teachings I learned and meditation practices I practiced. Faaar from it.

I wished I could manage this better, but some factors are outside of my control. And the stakes are ever higher as a father and husband now, something I struggled with.

If being an indie solopreneur was playing life in hard mode, I don’t know what mode being that plus being a new dad and husband and son to elderly parents is. Legendary mode? Impossible mode?

I can only try my best.

And find more permissionless rest to sustain my climb.

I've been watching the AI art space with keen interest. As AI platforms like Stable Diffusion, DALLE and OpenAI/GPT-3 get more sophisticated, more and more AI apps and SaaS are popping up for various sub categories within design:

- prompthero.com - AI designed [jewellery](https://twitter.com/javierjrueda/status/1595018419899977728), [fashion](https://twitter.com/javierjrueda/status/1593327496644202496)
- interiorai.com - AI designed house interiors
- thishousedoesnotexist.org - AI designed houses and architecture
- avatarai.com - AI designed profile pics and personal photo shoots
- hairstyleai.com + http://hairgen.ai - AI designed hairstyles to try on
- imaginarypaws.com - pet styles reimagined by AI
- aigraphics.io - AI designed graphic
- [Game sheets/game development assets](https://www.facebook.com/groups/aiartuniverse/permalink/676046660827238/?mibextid=S66gvF)

As AI starts to cover more and more uses cases and niches, I can't help but see this pattern that might be an interesting business opportunity:

### AI design SaaS will replace most low value design work within the decade

So to crystal ball it a bit, what might be some more use cases and niches that AI art can disrupt? What are some mechanical turk style, low value work that AI can easily take over?

When I think tasks that's lower on the value chain, I think of Fiverr. Anything that costs $5 to do is probably low value work. And many low value work are straightforward enough to be done by a robot. *So what might be the most popular Fiverr gigs that can be done by AI?*

Just look at this [list of 40 gigs](https://moneymint.com/30-most-profitable-gigs-on-fiverr/) – I added a 🤖 beside each one I think can be fully/partly done by AI:

- Proofreading and editing 🤖
- Book covers design 🤖
- Logo design 🤖
- Virtual assistant
- Ad campaigns 🤖
- Creating video intros 🤖
- Digital marketing
- Article writing 🤖
- Website testing
- Designing flyers, leaflets, business cards, postcards 🤖
- Wordpress troubleshooter
- Diet plan
- Tips to new parents
- Photoshop editing 🤖
- Social media marketing
- Product description writing 🤖
- Making video tutorials 🤖
- Web design 🤖
- Viral promoter/Influencer marketing
- Teach language
- Transcribing audio files 🤖
- Astrology
- Creating gifts out of recycled materials
- Financial consulting
- Writing reviews 🤖
- Social media page setup
- Creating Pinterest pins 🤖
- Travel planner
- Infographic 🤖
- Making jewellery 🤖
- Social media manager
- Writing CV, cover letter, resume 🤖
- Website building using templates 🤖
- 3D, 2D modelling 🤖
- Business consulting
- Social media advertising
- Presentation design 🤖
- Architectural design 🤖
- Cartoonist 🤖

The writing gigs can already be done by GPT-3. With more specific training, you could have a SaaS.

Using AI to generate designs for logos, flyers, book covers and ad thumbnails sounds like great opportunities! Within each category lies even more opportunities for more niche uses cases, like how @Winkletter created AI-generated coloring books.

*What other AI design opportunities are there?*

If something is a small enough bet that you won't lose sleep over if it fails, that's actually great for your mental health as a founder or creator. Just heard this from [Arvid's podcast episode with Daniel Vassallo](https://twitter.com/arvidkahl/status/1595866963716120577).

More needs to know this.

I think there's too much hero worship around the founder who goes all in on one big bet and succeeds. Because the road to that hero's success is littered with 100s or 1000s more founders who didn't succeed from going all in that you never heard about. And these 1000s of founders likely got super stressed, lived with anxiety, and finally ran out of cash, burned out, got depressed for a while.

Is that worth it? No matter the personal growth opportunities, I doubt it's *that* worth it.

Cue small bets.

Just small enough in scope, effort, resources, time and emotions invested that you wouldn't flinch if it tanked. Make something minimum and viable, with a feature set (or just a single feature) that solves the most painful task for your user. Cap your effort by working in a calm and focused way, not stressed out. Pay for a domain, get free or cheap hosting, or run it on a free trial plan to contain costs and not overspend before it's even validated. Timebox your work, eat and drink well, have some downtime, not burning through the nights. Lower or have zero expectations that it will work to not lose sleep over it. Then rinse and repeat to make more small bets to up your chances that something will succeed.

There.

A formula for a portfolio of small bets that's great for mental health.

A saner, calmer, healthier way to create and make a living on the internet.